Linear Regression
by MonstersInside
Summary: Request fic: Explains Sara's absence in 13x17. GSR. Angst. Tissues may be required but are not included.


**Linear Regression:**

She collapsed onto the bench in the locker room, the cool metal soothing her hot skin but not the raging torrent of thoughts and emotions that surged through her veins like liquid fire.

She stared, dumbfounded at the file shaking in her outstretched hands. She could feel her fingertips tentatively tracing the harsh, cold outlines of the little spiky black words as though they had been deprived of them for so long and were now trying to remember what to do with them.

Her eyes travelled down the page with the air of a wild animal cautiously approaching something that could lead to its salvation but could equally lead to its destruction.

She did not want to continue reading it, in fact, the thought made her feel physically sick, but she found her eyes drawn to it anyway. Like the addict sought the toxic drug, she sought the poisonous next line. In both cases, neither of them could predict the consequences of their actions.

The final straw was the sight of the last words written at the bottom of the page. They were so different from anything else on it and more destructive than the screeds of text that had preceded them.

They were not neat and printed in the meticulous mind-numbing lines, like rows upon rows of stubborn, unfeeling little black soldiers, each of them tearing another little piece of her away with their harsh effects.

This was something else entirely.

The beautiful, smooth, flowing script that was so achingly familiar. Evidence that his soft, warm hand had moved over this page. Evidence that he had signed away her life. Evidence that he had consciously and willingly done the things that he had sworn he would never do to her.

Forgotten her. Used her. Left her. Hurt her. _Destroyed _her.

She could feel her sensitive fingers brush over the slight indents the black pen had made on the page, hungering for him, needing him so badly now that even _this, _this pathetic action was enough to feel close to him.

She pulled her hand away from the page as though burned and found it flying, shaking to her mouth in horror as she felt the tears begin to slide from her eyes without her permission and without her caring.

After all of these years and the countless pieces of horrific papers she had had forced on her on this job; the twisted diaries of serial rapists, their sick fantasies set down so lovingly on the page; the case files coldly detailing the horrendous, terrifying specifics of a case, always the same, always emotionless and chilling stripping away any feeling and only leaving the raw, uncensored facts; the personnel files detailing someone's life having everything they had ever done or contributed to society laid down in simple black and white; the death warrants signed without thought by the undead judges...

Had he found it that easy?

Had he placed his signature on the single most horrific document she had ever come across without even pausing to consider the costs and consequences? Surely not. But if he had considered them, _really _considered them, then he would never have put pen to paper/

"Sara?"

She jumped as the curious, concerned voice of her current supervisor cut across her Hellish thoughts.

Feeling vulnerable and foolish, she hastily wiped away the hot tears with the edges of her hand and stared at the ceiling as she took several deep, shaky breaths and attempted to compose herself, knowing what was coming and bracing herself for it.

"You OK?" he asked quietly, moving further into the room and taking the bench opposite her, concern in his warm eyes as he added sternly, "Note, the responses of either 'yes' or 'I'm fine' will not be considered acceptable responses to that question."

He knew her too well. She had let him get too close. She was coming to learn that she would always regret allowing that to happen.

"No and I'm not." she replied with a pathetic stab at humour.

"Come on Sara, what's wrong? What's happened?" he asked softly a faint sense of urgency colouring his words.

"It's nothing really, I'll be OK/" she murmured weakly knowing that he wouldn't buy it, knowing that _she _didn't buy it. How could she?

"Sara." he said, warningly, "You listen here young lady, I've raised teenagers, I know every trick in the book and more besides. You're not leaving this room until you've had a good talk and a better cry."

She stared hopelessly at him, knowing that he was as genuine as he was stubborn and that he was as stubborn as she was.

"I made the mistake of becoming rather fond of you Sara Sidle. You're family now, like it or not. That means that you have to let me help you, whether you want to or not. So come on, let's not waste any more of each other's time; out with it."

"Grissom." she found herself saying without ever remembering telling herself to say anything, "He's uh, he's served me with our divorce papers." she said, feeling her eyes filling up again despite her furious promises to herself that she would _not _cry in front of Russell.

Still, she was in shock. If someone had told her four years ago that she would have been using the word 'Grissom' and the word 'divorce' in the same sentence she would have referred herself to a hospital, convinced that she was hallucinating.

"You didn't see this coming?" he asked, gently, surprised and a little confused by her reaction, "What happened with the whole 'truth is he's not my husband anymore' malarkey?"

"Nothing. She replied, hating the bitterness that she could not keep from her voice, "He never served me any papers, nothing was ever finalised. I thought...Well I don't know what I thought..."

"You thought that it wouldn't come to this?" he suggested, softly, slipping his hand over hers.

"No, no I _prayed _that it wouldn't come to this." she snapped,

The tears that had been clinging stubbornly to her eyes now falling helplessly. She made no effort to brush them away anymore.

"I prayed to every God in every religion on this planet, none of which I believe in, on the off-chance that something would change because...Because I don't know, because this is wrong. Because this shouldn't be happening. Because _we _are supposed to be _together._ Because I love the stupid bastard and because he loves me."

She was on her feet now, screaming and sobbing in pain and frustration and not giving a damn about it.

"Hey, hey, shh." he said, soothingly, gently slipping his hands over her wrist and guiding her back to the bench, attempting to calm her.

She let him. So much of the control and the purpose in her life had already been stripped from her that she could not see the harm in letting someone else decide where she sat and wept.

She could feel his arm around her shaking shoulders, murmuring incoherently in a soothing tone as he gently rocked her back and forth, attempting to offer her what little comfort her could as the tears continued to fall.

All the while the shocked words were torn repeatedly from her throat, all in the same strangled whisper, the only thing that made any sense to her anymore, the only thing that she could say,

"That should be enough, it should be _enough..."_

God only knew how long Russell sat with her, never wavering or even threatening to leave her or tire of her, whether or not he regretted his rash promise of unconditional understanding and support.

"It should be enough." he said finally when she was able to process English once more and he had deemed her strong enough to sit up unsupported, albeit with much unsteady swaying and with several rattling breaths that shook her entire frame, "But it's not."

"It _is_." she protested feebly, "I love him, he loves me, everything else is just...It doesn't matter."

"But it must. Everything else _must _matter Sara or you wouldn't be here, neither of you would. Everything else is life. Love makes life worth living but without the life, the love is meaningless. You need both in order to be happy."

"He is both. He is my love and my life." she murmured,

"Then why are you still here?" he asked softly,

"Because I _am _here. I matter here. I mean something here. I can be Sara Sidle here as opposed to just 'Mrs Grissom' utterly defined by my marriage. I can _live _here, I can exist here."

She shook her head, unable to adequately put her feelings into words,

"I need Grissom in order to make my life worth living but I need Vegas in order to live."

"What do you want Sara?" he asked quietly,

"Something it seems I can't have." she replied, ruefully,

"The only thing you can't have is what you won't fight for." he said quietly

"What are you-"

"You love each other, yes?" it was not a question but she nodded anyway, slightly confused, "You want to make each other happy but above that, you just want the other person to be happy, regardless of the consequences to yourself. He thinks he's helping you, he thinks he's taking the first step on the road to making you happy. he knows you haven't been happy but he doesn't know how to fix it. He thinks this is the only thing he can do to keep from hurting you. He doesn't realise that that's what he's doing. He can't see that the beautiful, intelligent, witty wonderful woman in Vegas is hurting _for _him, he thinks that she's hurting _because of _him. He loves you. He doesn't want to, no, he _can't _do that to you...Didn't you tell me that you once did exactly the same thing to him for exactly the same reasons?"

"Yes..." she breathed, softly, remembering the video she had made for him when they had been forced apart. Ironically enough, with him in Vegas and with her off researching the world.

"You have to ask yourself two things now Sara."

"It's not that simple." she protested, quietly,

"It is." he said, firmly, cutting across her before she could answer back, Firstly, do you want this? And are you willing to fight for it? If the answer to either of those questions is 'yes' then I'll drive you to the airport right now, if not then to the nearest ice-cream parlour..."

"Ecklie's going to have a heart attack..." she murmured, instinctively knowing the answer, "We're already short-staffed..."

...

"What are you thinking?" he asked, noting her tense silence as they drove,

She had long since given up trying to avoid answering these questions and said, with difficulty,

"I don't know. I want to fight, but I don't know if I should...I'm tired of always being the one that has to fight for this relationship." she began, knowing how childish and foolish it sounded but out being able to argue it out with any more eloquence in her current state, "He never seems to be the one that's pushing for it. Maybe I'm just wondering if he actually wants us to fight..."

"He's fighting too Sara. Just not in the same way." Russell told her softly, "You're fighting for something you hope that you both want, this relationship. He's fighting for something that he knows he wants. Your happiness."

She nodded silently, needing this to be true.

The airport passed in a blur that, even had she wanted to get cold feet, she did not have the time. Right up until the point where they reached the gate and time seemed to stand still for all of the doubt in the world to hit her simultaneously like a freight train. But still he did not let her consider it, pulling her into a brief, rough hug as he said,

"Call me when you land."

"Yes Dad." she had choked thickly, unable to physically say anything more meaningful without breaking down.

"You'll be alright, you're a fighter Sara Sidle. And just know this, whatever happens, you won't spend the rest of your life wishing you had fought for him."

"Thank you. For everything." she whispered, peeling her fingers from his with difficulty as she turned towards the gate,

"And Sara?"he said, causing her to turn back and look at him inquisitively, catching the mischievous twinkle in his eyes, as he told me matter-of-factly, "If needs be, I'm sure I've still got a shot-gun at the back of the closet somewhere..."

She laughed throatily at this, glad for him breaking the tension that had been collecting inside of her as she pulled him into a hasty embrace before hurrying through the gate without looking back, knowing that the plane would likely leave without her if she had tried to stay and say half of the things she wanted to.

She had expected the journey to pass quickly. At one point, she had become so used to making this trip, that she used to plan it to leave straight after a shift and simply slept the whole way there. She should have known better. Everything on it seemed determined to make her think of her husband.

She had looked down to check something at her feet and had spotted the innocent little Victoria's Secret bag perched underneath the seat in front and almost instantly, she could hear his voice,

_"What is Victoria's Secret I wonder?"_

_"Beauty Grissom. Remember?"_

She could remember. She could remember sitting half-frozen on the side of that ice-rink, her only concern at the time being the case and not contracting hypothermia as she had joked with him. Right up until the point those words had slipped from between his lips,

"Since I met you."

With that simple phrase he had, as he so often could do with such ease, made her and broken her simultaneously.

She had known what he had said but still could not quite bring herself to believe that those words had escaped from his usually so well guarded lips.

They had.

They had fallen from them with ease, with no idea of what they could do to her. Casually placed into the conversation as though it was nothing.

And it had been nothing. It had been nothing to him. But to her...He had had no idea what it had been to her.

That was the only way she had been able to deal with those years of torment. When he had kept her at arm's length, pushing her as far away as either of them could stand, forcing the distance between them, treating her with a cold indifference and then dropping one warm phrase casually into the conversation and reeling her back in just as she had given up hope that he could ever care for her.

But she had always been the one who had gone back when he had put distance between them. She had always been the one who had pushed for them when he had pushed away. She had always been the one to put herself out, to leave herself open and vulnerable while he had always kept himself safe, leaving her hating herself for doing so when she had known how he would respond. Always the same. Right up until that moment...

That moment when he knew, when they both knew. That moment when he had opened himself up, when he admitted his feelings and had admitted his regret for not acting upon them. But he had not been able to confront her but instead had told a suspect while she watched on silently...

_"It's sad isn't it Doc? A couple of middle aged guys like us, how we never really touch people unless we're wearing our latex gloves. We wake up one morning and we realise that for fifty years, we haven't really lived at all...But then one day, someone young and beautiful offers to share their life with you, someone you can care about. We would have to give up everything we had worked for to have them, I couldn't do it...But you did. And she took that back didn't she? She gave you something precious then took it back. So you took her life instead. You couldn't stand the fact that she was giving it to someone else and so you took her life."_

To this day, she still did not know if he had known that she had been watching. She thought he had. It had been targeted more towards her than towards him. The fear of loss and rejection and the regret that he had not done it anyway, the loneliness that he felt. He realised what he could have had, what he could have lost, but really, what he would have stood to lose which was more than what he had and his sorrow and not having at least taken the risk to have something.

To this day, it still broke her to hear him murmur those words, "I couldn't do it."

In that moment she had wanted to throw herself through the glass and hit him and hold him and tell him that he could; to tell him that he had o because she needed him to; because she loved him and she needed him to say that he loved her back; to learn how to trust her, how to love her, how to have his precious something too...

He had though, she reasoned. He had chosen her. He had chosen her that night that they had rescued Nick and had chosen her when he found her in Costa Rica.

The memory of those events still stood out in sharp relief in her mind. The times he had fought, had acted on impulse and feeling, stripped away the order and logic that he tried so desperately to find in the chaotic and illogical world that they lived in. He had realised that he did not want to lose himself in little things that meant nothing, to go through life never taking a chance and never living. He wanted to take a risk, wanted to touch, wanted to feel, wanted to live, wanted _her._

When they had rescued Nick all those years ago. When it first began. When out of the ash of that horrific case and the consuming fear of losing someone that they loved; something beautiful had risen.

It had been late, they had been up for days living on adrenaline and fear. That hadn't mattered to him. He had known her, had known that she would not be asleep, that she would not have been able to sleep that night, that she was unlikely to do so for the rest of it either...

He had tapped gently at the door, showing the last piece of self-restraint that he had that night.

She had pulled it open to find him standing there with passion and intensity and lust burning in his normally soft blue eyes that she had lost herself in so many times.

They had not said a word to each other. They had not had to. They had been able to communicate without speaking, had known for weeks, months, _years _that it would come to that. They had danced around for far too long and Nick's ordeal had shown them both that they had wasted so much time already on empty words and hollow glances. Neither of them had been willing to waste any more.

He had placed his lips on hers, tenderly and tentatively at first and then, when he had felt her respond to him in the way she had wanted to for years, he had stripped away the only cautious barriers that he had still had placed around himself and had pulled her close to him, his tender fingertips hungrily searching the shape and curves of her body that he knew so well with a delicacy that sent shivers up her spine.

He had paused barely long enough to let the words he had held from her for years tumble from his lips and fall like music on her ears that had waited so long for him to say what they had both known from that first meeting in San Francisco, "I love you." Before they had both fallen together in a confused tangle of gentle touch and careful whispers where they had made love and lain together until the morning.

When it had come, he had told her that he knew what he wanted, what he needed, that he was sorry it had taken this long and this much to get to this point. She had told him that she did not care what time had gone as long as all the time they had left was spent together.

He had promised that it would.

A thin film of tears clung to her eyes at the memory. Or more appropriately of what it had created, the knowledge of where they were now.

She endured he flight somehow, even though by the end of it, for one reason or another, she was a nervous wreck.

After her ordeal with Natalie Davis, she took no comfort in being trapped in confined areas and being thirty thousand feet with nothing but a group of strangers and her bittersweet memories for comfort was not her idea of the ideal way to spend a day off.

She had stumbled into a taxi and was on her way to a hotel she knew before she remembered that she had promised to call Russell and hastily wrestled her phone from her bag.

"Hey, it's me." she had said,

"Good, you got there in one piece then?" he asked cheerily,

"Just about." she replied grimly, "What's happening in Vegas?"

"The Prom Queen turned up dead at David's high school reunion." he replied casually,

"Oh. That's not good..."

"No but don't you worry about that just now, we'll be fine." he told her, "Where are you headed now?"

"The Sorbonne. He's guest lecturing there for a few months." she replied quietly,

"Good luck." he said, being distracted by something on his end as she replied,

"Thanks." as he muttered a hasty apology while simultaneously answering a question on what sounded like 'blood bubbles'.

...

She stood outside the grand building taking a moment to drink in the exquisite design, the intricacies of which she never tired of before bracing herself and forcing her feet to carry her up the stairs and through the entrance.

She walked purposefully across the cool, expansive reception area towards a young, dark haired woman who was sitting behind an efficient desk and said as calmly as she could,

"I'm looking for Doctor Gilbert Grissom, could you tell me where he is at the moment?"

Without having to consult anything she handed her a pamphlet and said in an airy, lightly-accented voice, "Dr. Grissom has been lecturing all morning, his last session is about to begin, if you would like to attend, it is in auditorium 3."

"Thank you. " she replied, thinking that she would.

As she settled herself in a fortunate gap in the front row, she glanced down at the leaflet to check the title of the lecture she was attending,

_The Use of Insect Activity In Determining Time Of Death._

She smiled quietly to herself as she remembered the case he had broken using the very same topic and how it had affected their relationship.

She remembered trembling her way to his office to confront him, not sure what she wanted to say but sure that she wanted to say something. She could not remember giving those words permission to slip from her lips in response to his rational attitude but they had done so anyway,

_"You have empathy for her Sara, you want someone to pay for what was done."_

_"Do you want to sleep with me?"_

_"Did you just say what I think-"_

_"That way, when I wake up in a cold sweat under the blankets hearing Kaye's screams, you can tell me it's nothing...It's just empathy..."_

He interrupted her reminiscence there as he walked onto the stage reminding her of the time they had first met as the same feelings welled up in her fourteen years later. Some things didn't change...

He began with a brief introduction on the predictable behaviour of insects how the bugs 'always did their jobs', his intense blue eyes always seeming to find her, before he came to the thing he truly loved when teaching; asking questions of his students.

"Based on these facts and your own experiences, can anyone suggest a way in which we might use insect activity to determine time of death?"

"Linear regression." she replied, quietly, deliberately keeping her face hidden as he searched for the speaker,

"Very good." he replied softly, not daring to think he knew, "Can you elaborate?"

"Insects arrive at a corpse in a specific order. If we allow the insects collected from the body to mature, noting how long this takes, that will tell us how old they were when we found the body and therefore how long the body has been there." she answered in an undertone,

"Beautifully put Miss..." he said, finding her at last.

"Grissom." she replied raising her head and allowing their eyes to meet, speaking in a voice barely above a whisper, ensuring that he was the only one in the room who could hear her.

He continued with the rest of the lecture as normally as he could, both of them tingling and wondering what the Hell they were going to do when this was over. As with before in San Francisco, he had eyes for only one person in the room. And again as before, she waited behind to speak with him after the lecture.

"Hello Gilbert." she said, quietly, unable to do as she had intended and wait for him to speak as the capacious auditorium emptied around them.

"You made some good points earlier." he told her carefully as people moved around them as they trickled from the hall, like a river bending around rocks.

"I had a good teacher." she replied softly,

"Perhaps. But I rather think that the student must always succeed them at some point."

"Not always." she murmured. She glanced around momentarily, seeing that the hall had emptied she dropped the pretence and said, softly, "Gil, we need to talk."

"Yes. We do." he replied quietly, "Come on..."

He led her away from the crowds and she followed him unquestioningly until they emerged on the roof and stood together, gazing out at the image of Paris sprawled beneath them, seeming so small and insignificant from their perspective.

"Do you know why Guy de Maupassant ate at the base of the Eiffel Tower almost every day?" he asked her, staring at it,

"He hated it." she replied, turning to face him instead, "He said that that was the only place in Paris he could sit and not have to look at it."

"Indeed. But still, he would have known that it would be there. Always, even if he could no longer see it."

He leaned forwards at this point, over the balcony and whether by accident or by design, the wedding ring he wore on a thin chain around his neck, normally hidden by his shirt, caught her eye for a moment before vanishing back into the folds of his shirt once more.

She almost wept at the irony of this as she felt her own lie heavy above her heart.

"I always knew you were there..." she murmured, quietly, knowing what he had been trying to say. "But sometimes that just knowing we were together wasn't enough...I wanted you there with me, to give me more than an empty apartment and a take-away menu to come home to, to talk with me after I'd pulled a triple on a hard case, to be there for me when no-one else could be, to understand where everyone else was confused, to love me when I couldn't love myself, to just hold me when I woke up under the blanket screaming..."

"I know...I'm sorry, you deserve better than that Sara." he murmured softly, his hand gently and unconsciously traced the length of her spine. She was not sure how she felt about the contact but decided that it was contact and she needed it and let it lie, "That's why we're here. That's why I said..."

He trailed off. They both knew what he had said and neither wanted to repeat it.

"I still didn't think you would go through with it..." she told him softly, "I didn't think that you would send them..."

His hand fell from her back as he replied, "I had to Sara. I couldn't keep making you unhappy."

"You weren't making me unhappy, the lack of you was."

He shook his head, massaging his temples as he answered, "However you want to dress it up, I was responsible. You deserve better than that Sara, better than me. If it came down to choice between both of us continuing to live in the way we have been, making the other miserable, and letting you go, making you happy, whatever the price you know I would do that."

"This isn't making me happy." she whispered,

"No, not now, but it will, it has to. We can't Sara. I can't. I can't keep doing that to you."

"How can you say that? How can you do _this _after everything-"

"You know why I did it Sara. We both agreed that it was for the best." He told her softly, holding her chin between his hands and turning her face up to look into his eyes.

"Well now I don't think that it's in our 'best interests'. How can it be? How can it be this? How can we have survived fourteen years to reach this? To give it all up with one phone call, with two thoughtless signatures? How can we be reduced to nothing after _fourteen years_ Gil?"

"Whatever we have now, whatever we are left with, it doesn't change what we had. Do you regret that? Do you regret those fourteen years?"

"No. Never. Wherever this ends, I will never regret the beginning, I will never regret you and what we had. That's why I'm here. I can't do it. I can't walk away from this, from you, I can't turn my back on this and try and rebuild my life on nothing if I know that I haven't done everything in my power to have something."

"You have to." He said, quietly, running a hand through her hair, "We have to." His hand dropped from her hair and came to rest on her shoulders, forcing her to look at him as he went on, "I never believed in soul-mates, in fate bringing two people together because it was meant to be, written in the stars, because they were destined to be together. I believed in finding someone who fit with you, not perfectly, in fact never perfectly, the gaps the flaws created made a relationship, but I believed in finding someone I connected with and falling in love with them and when I fell for you Sara Sidle, I fell hard."

Tears shone in her eyes that he wiped away instinctively, drawn to help her, to heal her, to fix her. Always.

"I don't believe that there is one perfect person out there for every single person, that you only have one chance in seven billion to find happiness, that you are only made for one in seven billion because you are made for so much more than that. There are so many people out there you would fit with, so many people you could make happy, so many people who would be lucky to have you, so many people who would deserve to have you more than me."

She shook her head at this, unable to speak through her tears.

"Yes." He said, firmly, even though his voice cracked, "I don't deserve you Sara. It was stupid and selfish of me to start this relationship when I knew how it would end, like this. With me lost in little things that don't matter because I was too afraid to let myself get lost in the things that did. I need you. I will always need you and there will never be anyone else who can mean as much to me as you have and always shall. But you don't need me and it would be selfish of me to keep you here."

"No, I do, I do Gil." She protested, frantically, shaking her head, "I can't live without you, without us, I don't know how to. I can't learn to live without you again. I trust you, I feel safe with you. I let you in to places I would never let other people see, _could _never let other people see. I can never had what we had with anyone else, and I would never want to try."

"You will. You always will. Even if it won't be what we had, it will still be better than what we have now which is nothing."

"No, we will never have nothing, we will always have something, will always have each other. I will_ always _have you." She whispered as she leant in towards him, her forehead gently pressed against his as she breathed, "I love you Gil Grissom."

"I love you too…" he murmured back, "That's why we have to do this."

"No." she whispered, "No, we don't. We can be happy, we can fix this, we _have _to fix this. I'll come back, I'll live in Paris, or wherever you live-"

"Will that make you happy?" he asked softly,

"_You _will make me happy." She replied, instinctively,

"That's not what I asked." He breathed, "I asked if _that _would make you happy and we both know that it won't. We both know that you can't leave Vegas any more than I can come back. We are two people who were never meant to have those things Sara, we-"

"No, no you don't get to pull that crap on me!" she snarled, "There are a lot of things in this world that were not meant to happen but went ahead anyway. My father was not meant to beat and rape me but he did. My mother was not meant to murder my father in his sleep with me watching but she did." Tears were now pouring silently from her eyes, her hands curling in to fists as she punctuated every word in her next sentence by striking his chest furiously, "We are not meant to end like this."

"Hey, hey…"

He grabbed her furious wrists and held her tightly, pulling her close to him as she struggled, supporting her as she collapsed against him.

He hated himself for doing this. Hated himself for what it was doing to her. But he knew that it was the right thing. He had made his choice. However hard it was for either of them to accept now, however hard she cried, however hard they hurt, it was right. It had to be right because this was wrong.

"This is not how this was supposed to work." She choked weakly as he lowered her gently to the ground.

"I know honey, I'm sorry but-"

"No." she whispered, cutting across him, the pain and torment in her haunted eyes silencing him at once, "Not just now. We can do that later. For now, just hold me, just hold me here and now and maybe we can die happy this way…"

He did.

Curling his arm around her he drew her to him, like a mother bear collecting her cubs, pulling her closer to his body, allowing her to rest her head on his chest and listen to its rhythmic rise and fall with each breath he took as she closed her eyes and still allowed the faint tears to creep from beneath her lids as they lay the way they had always done when she had woken screaming at three am and just needed someone she loved and trusted to hold her.

He closed his eyes, hurting and somehow praying that her last wish would come true. That they would lie here until they both turned to dust.

He never felt more alive than when he was with her and he never felt more confused either.

The wonderful, rich layers of her complexity forever intrigued him and he could never be sure of what she would do next. She was always revealing a little bit more of herself to him, giving him something to learn about their life, forever teaching him. He loved that about her. He loved her…

Before she had arrived here he had known what he was going to do, what he _had _to do. Now…

She never failed to make him appreciate how precious his life was, how precious she was and how selfish human beings could be.

He had held her at arm's length for years, afraid to let her get anywhere near him, for her safety as much as his own. He knew that he could love her until the day he died, that he would, but there would always be something else that captured his interest, that gave him a new obsession that month. He would always love her, always, and however much she had assured him that she knew who she had married, he knew that she had expected better than this, that she _deserved _better than this.

And yet, for all of that. He still wanted her. He wanted her to lie here with him forever, to freeze and bottle this moment and keep them in it until they did turn to dust, to have them both live in the only thing that they both really loved for the rest of eternity. For this to be enough.

He realised that he had spent most of his life separated from other people. She had been the only one who had been able to strip away his defences, to break down the cold mask he wore for the external world and pierce the man underneath. She was the only human being in this world who knew, who really _knew _Gil Grissom.

He knew that she would be the only one who ever would.

He knew what it had meant when he had put his signature on those divorce papers. He had known the sacrifice he had been making. Had known what it would cost him and had known that, for her happiness, it was more than a price he was willing to pay. He knew that he would spend the rest of his life alone if he gave her up now. He knew that, while she would learn to love again, because that was who she was, he would not.

He marvelled at her strength. After all of the reasons the people in her life had given her not to love, she still kept her heart in a fragile glass cage and had trusted him enough to give it to him. He had given her his as well, fully and completely and he would never be able to take it back. But he could not give her himself.

He thought of her, of the sacrifice that he had chosen to make and wondered now if what he was putting her through had been worth it.

Was it worth torturing the woman he loved, for this? For his lecturing in Paris and his research in Peru? Was causing her so much pain for the sake of books and papers, that would last forever, while she may only last that night, was it really worth it?

Words that Catherine had said to him when Sara had first left Vegas came back to him then, "Go after her…"

He had quietly replied with the simple, "That's not what she wants…"

Had that really been the only thing stopping him from jumping on a plane and finding her, wherever she was in this mad world? Had there been more to it? The lab? His colleagues? His work? Could there have been anything then that would have stopped him from going to her if she had so much as glanced at him in the right way then?

No.

He would have dropped everything to go to her. For the chance to see her, to hear her voice, to feel her soft skin on his, to savour every atom of her being to be with her.

Why was now so different?

When he had gone after her in Costa Rica, when he had left the lab, as he had promised, with no fanfare and no cake in the break room, he had gone for her. He had followed Catherine's advice and had followed her half-way around the world just to feel his lips on hers one last time.

If he had been given the opportunity to replay one moment of his life again for the rest of it, it would have been that moment.

Because in that moment he had felt things he had never experienced before and hungered to experience again. He had spent all of his time in a lab, amongst books and papers and work that didn't matter, that didn't mean anything, he had discovered that he could hold the only thing that mattered, that meant anything, that made any sense, between his hands. He could look at it for the rest of his life and never tire of its beauty, he could study it for an eternity and never understand it, he could spend all day every day with it and still long for a minute more and then find that even that was not enough, that that would never be enough time to spend with the incredible being that he was somehow blessed enough to call his wife.

His wife. She was still his wife. He could see the gold band that she wore around her neck, curiously in the same way he had worn his. The rational part of him had told him that they were separated that he could not wear it anymore. The other part of him, the part that he ought to listen to more often, had told him that he could not give it away that easily, that it, like her, was still important to him, important enough to keep safe, to watch over.

Was this really what he wanted? Or was she right? Could they still fix this? Could they still be happy? He found that, while he did not know if she was, he wanted her to be.

This was ridiculous. They loved one another. He had promised to her that he would never hurt her, that he would always be with her, would cherish her until the day he died, that he would do anything to make her happy. All she wanted was for them to be together. All he wanted was her.

He had spent his entire life trying to find meaning in things that did not contain it. Trying to find purpose in solving puzzles, love in insects and meaning in science and research. And for all of this, for all of his skills in these areas, he had failed to realise that he was looking in the wrong places. All of these things could be found in one thing, in one person, in Sara.

That was all he wanted. All he needed to feel that he had something to show for the time he had spent upon this earth. He wanted people, he wanted people to remember him. And not just for the name on a paper or in a book, not just for his 'contributions to science' that, in the great scheme of things. People who mattered. Sara, mattered. He wanted her to remember her. He wanted her to care about him. He wanted her to be happy. Yes, that was what he wanted, that was all he had ever wanted, all he had ever truly wanted. And for now all he needed to do to achieve that was to be here. To hold her here while she quietly wept, to cradle her in his arms and pretend that this was all there was all that there would ever be. That they could lie together here forever, that civilization could collapse and the world end around them but they would still have each other, locked forever in their loving embrace, happy. He could do that. And so they lay, their bodies lovingly entwined around one another holding one another as the sun died and the lights of the city below burst into life around them. And for now, that was enough... 


End file.
